Conservatives are stepping up efforts to turn 1960s radical Bill Ayers into a political liability for Barack Obama. This spring, Obama's links to Ayers briefly became a campaign controversy. Now American Issues Project is spending $2.8 million to air a TV ad highlighting links between Obama and Ayers, a founder of the Weather Underground Organization, which opposed the Vietnam War and was responsible for several bombings.

Evelyn Johnson's father has never liked talking about his time in the Army during World War II. He was angry that black servicemen like him fought for freedom overseas only to come home to face discrimination, she says.

Everything about Chicago is big. Its history, its swagger, its size. Even its addiction to sports is jumbo. It's a huge, gracious, raucous city pumped full of superlatives: the world's largest public library (Harold Washington Center), biggest bakery (Nabisco), busiest airport (O'Hare), longest street (Western Avenue), highest steeple (United Methodist), most trafficked road (Dan Ryan Expressway), biggest food festival (Taste of Chicago), and the longest drought since a World Series title (1908).